Show description

Bourdieu and Passeron (1977), Walkerdine (1988) and Belenky et al. (1986) argued that the concept of rationality valued in school was biased, stacking the odds against working class students, girls and minorities being able to be recognised as an adequate ‘rational subject’. Teese (2000), following Bourdieu, suggested that the very kind of disposition required to take on the most abstract forms of physics and the like, the knowledge most valued by schools, were ones that made it most impossible for working class students.

25 kind of development needed at different stages of education—is something we want to revisit here. Commonly school curriculum reforms are not simply designed by subject or discipline specialists but have a broader professional, community or political input. Such reforms commonly try to accommodate some outward looking assessment to what is important for students beyond school as well as some representation of what is important within subjects. In an earlier review of the changing proposals and thinking about curriculum in Australia we found that two states had developed quite different approaches to grounding a curriculum in ‘essential learnings’.

2001). Chaos of disciplines. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Abbott, A. (2002). The disciplines and the future. In S. ), The future of the city of intellect: The changing American university (pp. 205–230). Stanford: Stanford University Press. , & Claro, M. (2009). 21st century skills and competencies for new millennium learners in OECD countries (Vol. 41). OECD Education Working Papers. Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). , & Oerlemans, K. (2011). Curriculum change: The context for the development of the Tasmanian essential learnings curriculum.